A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome

by Emma Southon

The Romans designed the Republic to deny power to individuals and to prevent, through the means of shared power, checks and balances, any single man from becoming a tyrant. It was the Romans’ proudest achievement and it was founded in the unjust death of a woman.

Lucretia was raped by the kings son, and took her own life. Her family took her body and showed it to the people of Rome and demanded that the King and his son be exiled, and the people of Rome agreed, and thus the monarchy abolished and the republic born.

We can’t know how it died or whether a mother wept or a father laughed or no one cared at all.

This is also a good one to bring up in pubs if you quite enjoy horrifying people. Google supplicia canum if you absolutely must but do try not to think about the logistics too hard.

In that whole 503-year period of Roman imperial rule in the West, forty-nine percent of emperors were murdered. And another nine percent took their own lives after being overthrown in order to avoid being murdered, which brings us to a massive fifty-eight percent of emperors having violent and unhappy ends. Nine percent died in unknown circumstances so that number might be even higher. Just 24.6 percent of all the Roman emperors managed to die in their beds.3 Those stats are genuinely staggering to look at, but it’s important to remember that the second half of the Roman Empire, from 283 CE onwards, is skewing those numbers a lot.